


The Darkest Nights

by Sauronix



Series: The Lights of Lestallum [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blind Character, Canon Disabled Character, Emotional pain, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Chapter 13, Violence, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 03:33:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11119035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sauronix/pseuds/Sauronix
Summary: It’s hard to be the one left behind. He wants to fight by Gladio’s side, and not just because he feels useless puttering around the apartment. It’s because too many hunters have come home under white sheets and in pine boxes. Some don’t come home at all. Every time he kisses Gladio goodbye, a part of him wonders if it’s the last embrace they’ll share.In the long dark, Ignis fights to hold his relationship with Gladio together. Set after "The Lights of Lestallum."





	The Darkest Nights

Two years after the darkness began, Prompto leaves their apartment in Lestallum for more permanent lodgings near Hammerhead. Ignis and Gladio don’t bother marking his departure with a farewell meal or a tearful goodbye. What would be the point, when Prompto has always spent more time out of their home than in it? Prompto just packs all of his belongings into a single bag, hugs them both, and then he goes, letting the door click softly closed behind him.  
  
A month after that, Iris and Talcott move in, taking the spare room that Ignis once occupied. Gladio grumbles about privacy and personal space, but Ignis likes the company. These days, Gladio is almost never home. He works long hours at the gym, training fledgling hunters to fight, and spends still more hours away from Lestallum in pursuit of daemons. Sometimes, when he can’t stand to listen to Iris’s begging any longer, he takes her with him on hunts.  
  
But he never takes Ignis. No matter how many times Ignis has rationalized, pleaded, raised his voice, Gladio always refuses. It doesn’t matter to him that Ignis is still bound by his duty to Noct, that Ignis must be ready to fight when Noct returns. As far as Gladio’s concerned, his role in their mission is done.  
  
He can’t stay angry, though, when Gladio comes home to him in one piece and gathers him into his arms, kissing him like they haven’t seen each other in a decade. As Gladio lays him down and worships his body, he forgets all about the darkness and the daemons and their petty arguments. No, he lives for the quiet, tender way Gladio makes love to him so Iris and Talcott won’t hear. They stifle each other’s sounds with kisses. He buries his face in Gladio’s hair and surrenders to the oblivion of pleasure.  
  
Afterwards, when they’re both still slick from their exertions, he holds Gladio, counting each of his breaths as he sleeps.  
  
It’s hard to be the one left behind. He wants to fight by Gladio’s side, and not just because he feels useless puttering around the apartment. It’s because too many hunters have come home under white sheets and in pine boxes. Some don’t come home at all. Every time he kisses Gladio goodbye, a part of him wonders if it’s the last embrace they’ll share.  
  
He tries to occupy his mind, to stop himself from thinking those thoughts. When Gladio is away, Talcott reads to him, and in return, Ignis teaches him how to cook. They make pastries together—butter tarts and orange scones and cheese biscuits that Talcott sells at the market on Sundays. Even though they only bring in a few hundred gil each month, Ignis feels like he’s contributing to their household in some tangible way, so that Gladio doesn’t have to shoulder it all on his own.  
  
It’s an easy life, especially in these hard times. But sometimes, he sits at the open window in their living room, listening to the sounds of Lestallum, and he longs for something more than this.

  
*

  
Hunts are off limits, but Gladio still brings him to the gym every other day, always after hours, when they can be alone. At the very least, Gladio understands the need for regular exercise, if not Ignis’s desire to be useful. They spar, at times with weapons, at others with their bare hands. Gladio always holds back with him. Ignis wishes he wouldn’t. He’s not as competent with his daggers as he used to be, and without a challenge, he never will be again.  
  
He supposes Gladio engineers it that way. All the easier to keep Ignis at home, where he can’t be harmed by daemons.  
  
Since Gladio won’t challenge him, he challenges himself. He learns to rely on sound in combat. Despite his size, Gladio moves with the finesse of a coeurl, his quiet steps inaudible above the whirring of the fan that hangs from the ceiling. He gives himself away with the little things—the susurration of his pant leg on the floor, or an indrawn breath as he hefts his sword. Ignis fights barefoot so he can feel the vibrations of movement, so he can judge Gladio’s distance and the speed of his approach.  
  
And he improves. Slowly, but surely, even as Gladio persists with his well-meaning sabotage.  
  
Today, the gym swelters. The ceiling fan does nothing to cool down the room, only pushes the humid air around, draping it over them like an oppressive cloak. Ignis has already stripped down to a pair of jogging shorts and a loose tank top. His sweat beads on his skin, drips sluggish trails down his chest and spine.  
  
He holds himself perfectly still, his pulse elevated, and listens as Gladio circles him. He turns his head to follow the sticky sound of his bare feet on the mat. There’s a thump, and then those footsteps charge right at him. It’s all the warning Ignis needs to do a back handspring out of the path of Gladio’s practice blade. He acts without thinking, letting muscle memory take control. His hand bears his full weight, and he launches himself off of it, arching his body as momentum pulls him upright.  
  
But when he lands, it’s in a puddle of sweat, and his foot skids out from under him. The wind leaves his lungs as he falls hard on his back.  
  
“Shit. You okay?” Gladio’s footsteps run to him, then a hand takes his arm and tugs him to his feet.  
  
“Yes.” He sucks in a breath, cursing his poor form. It was an accident that would have happened to anyone, but Gladio won’t see it that way. “I slipped. That’s all.”  
  
Gladio chuckles, pulling him in to plant a kiss on his forehead. “Maybe we should call it a day.”  
  
“I’m all right, Gladio. I’m not made of glass.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. It’s just getting late and I’m hungry.”  
  
“Just fifteen more minutes, Gladio, if you don’t mind.” Ignis bends to collect his wooden daggers from the floor, wiping his clammy face on the front of his shirt. “I made a chiffon cake for dessert. I need to work off a few more calories before I can say I’ve earned it.”  
  
“Whatever you want, Iggy.”  
  
They end up going longer than fifteen minutes. Ignis alternately defends and attacks. Some rounds, he lets Gladio come to him, gracefully sidestepping his blows before they can land. Others, he listens for Gladio’s movements, then lets his daggers fly. He’s rewarded with a surprised yelp from Gladio, or a muttered curse, on those occasions where they find their mark. They only stop when Gladio tackles Ignis from the side, rolling him safely to the mats with his arms and legs locked tight around him.  
  
“Gotcha,” he murmurs.  
  
“So it would seem.” Ignis lets his muscles go slack in Gladio’s arms, relaxing against the damp warmth of his bare chest. “You won’t be so lucky next time, I can assure you.”  
  
“Aw, c’mon. You like it.” Ignis can feel Gladio’s grin against his ear.  
  
“Perhaps. But what I’d like most at this very moment is a shower.”  
  
“Can’t argue with that.”  
  
Gladio drops a kiss on the back of his neck before helping him to his feet, and they retreat to the locker room. Ignis pulls his sweat-soaked shirt over his head and kicks off his shorts, dropping them both in a sodden heap on the bench. He feels his way along the wall until he reaches the showers, reassured by Gladio’s padding footsteps on the tiles behind him.  
  
He turns one of the taps on and stands, unflinching, under the cold spray. It’s the only relief from the heat he’s had in thirty-six hours. On most days, their apartment feels like a sauna. Even the walls perspire when he touches them. After two years without the sun, it shouldn’t be this warm. All life on Eos should be dead. But perhaps there’s something to Ardyn’s magic that keeps the atmosphere as it should be.  
  
Perhaps even daemons can’t survive in a world without warmth.  
  
The shower next to him hisses to life, and then he hears Gladio lathering up. A moment later, strong, soapy hands slide up his back from waist to shoulder blades, washing the sweat from his skin.  
  
“You’re tense,” Gladio says.  
  
“Am I?”  
  
“Yeah.” Gladio’s thumbs knead into the knots in his shoulders, and Ignis can’t help the pained moan that slips out of him. “Maybe I can work some of these out for you later.”  
  
“You’re doing a fine job of it now,” Ignis murmurs.  
  
“I’d do a better job if you were lying down.” Gladio’s lips graze the side of his neck, then press into his hair, just behind his ear. His hands still work slowly at Ignis’s shoulders, more soothing than sensual. “Everything okay?”  
  
“Yes. I’ve just been thinking about how much I’m looking forward to that chiffon cake.”  
  
Gladio laughs and slips his arms down to twine around him. Ignis leans back into his embrace, letting himself be cradled. This is the only place he truly feels safe anymore. When he’s in Gladio’s arms, he doesn’t have to worry about the dangers around him. “Guess we should hurry it up, huh? Wouldn’t want to deprive you.”  
  
Ignis smiles, dropping his head back against Gladio’s chest. “It’s all right. I’m rather enjoying myself here.”  
  
“Oh yeah? Can’t say I disagree. Seeing you in action out there did things to me.”  
  
“Is that so?”  
  
Gladio pulls him closer, and the evidence of his desire slides between Ignis’s thighs, slippery and hard. Ignis sucks in a sharp breath at the sensation, as Gladio brushes his lips against his ear. “Yeah. Gettin’ all physical like that makes me think about fucking you.”  
  
They really shouldn’t be doing this here, of all places. Even though they’re alone, Gladio isn’t the only one with a key to the gym. The owner or one of the other trainers could come by unannounced, and the showers are open to the rest of the locker room. If anyone were to enter, they would see Gladio and Ignis right away. Yet in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—Ignis feels his body responding, goaded by Gladio’s admission of desire.  
  
He turns in Gladio’s arms, until they’re facing each other, and Gladio kisses Ignis with an urgency that excites him all the more. They stumble against the wall, still under the spray of the shower, and cling to each other, a tangle of arms and lips and legs. It’s disorienting. All he can feel is Gladio’s mouth, pressing kisses to his face, his neck, his shoulders, as if he’s desperate to taste every last part of Ignis’s body. Their arousals rub together between their bellies.  
  
“Every time?” Ignis pants.  
  
Gladio draws back. “What?”  
  
“Do you think about this every time we spar?”  
  
“Oh.” Gladio grinds his hips forward, hard, and Ignis lets out a shaky breath. “Yeah. Can’t help it, when you get all sweaty and red-faced like that. It’s the same way you look when I’m going down on you.”  
  
_Gods_. The images Gladio’s words spark in him are enough to make his knees weak every time. Ignis hooks a leg around Gladio’s thighs and pulls him closer, kissing him deeply, introducing his tongue to the inside of Gladio’s mouth. Gladio kisses him back with the same fervour. One of his hands holds Ignis’s backside, locking him in place as they rut against each other. The other goes between them and takes him in hand, working him with light strokes. It feels so good that Ignis has to break the kiss with a moan.  
  
“Hurry,” he says. He’s thinking too much about where they are and who might see them.  
  
Gladio laughs, but he also obliges, tightening his grip and stroking faster. After two years of intimacy, he knows exactly how to make Ignis’s body sing. And Ignis is all too willing to return the favour. They bring each other off like that, with their hands, against the shower wall, panting into each other’s mouths. Ignis shudders when he comes, and he has to hold onto Gladio’s shoulder to stay upright. Gladio follows with a stifled groan.  
  
For a moment, they lean on each other under the spray, breathing hard, letting the water rinse the spend from their hands. Ignis feels so pleasantly warm that he doesn’t want to move. But then Gladio kisses him softly and pulls away. “C’mon. Let’s wash up and get home.”  
  
When they’re bathed and dressed, they sling their gym bags over their shoulders and emerge onto the streets of Lestallum, now eerily quiet. The years of hardship have subdued the city. He can no longer hear the traffic that once rushed along the main street; besides hunters, no one can afford to drive. Most of Lestallum’s nightclubs have closed, silencing the music that pulsed through their open doors. Alcohol has become a precious commodity. The greenhouses surrounding Lestallum are primarily used to grow food, but some have allocated space for wheat and maize, and so a few bars cling to life, buoyed by the patrons who have the coin to spare for it. But they are few and far between.  
  
Gladio takes his hand as they walk. He always does, whenever they’re together outside of the apartment. The gesture is only half affectionate. It’s a practicality, too, to guide Ignis and keep him from tripping over debris in the street.  
  
“You did good in there,” Gladio says.  
  
“Did I?”  
  
“Yeah. You’re getting more accurate with your throws.” He chuckles, tugging on Ignis’s hand to steer him up onto the sidewalk. “I think you nailed me eight times. Three more than last week.”  
  
It isn’t a lot to show for two years’ worth of training. Ignis doesn’t say so, though. That’s the last thing he wants Gladio to hear. “It’s been hard work.”  
  
“Yeah, but you don’t let it get you down. You just get on with business.”  
  
They stop outside the apartment. He hears a jingle as Gladio takes the keys out of his pocket, then the sound of metal slotting into the lock.  
  
Ignis speaks without thinking. “If I’m doing so well, then perhaps we could revisit the possibility of hunting together.”  
  
It’s the wrong thing to say. He knows it even as the words leave his mouth. Gladio doesn’t open the door, but Ignis hears the scrape of his soles on the pavement as he turns to look at him.  
  
“We’ve talked about this, Ignis.” All the warmth and humour have gone from Gladio’s voice.  
  
“Not recently.”  
  
“Recently enough. I haven’t changed my mind.”  
  
“But if you think I’ve improved—”  
  
A hand seizes his throat, shoving him up against the wall, cutting off his words and knocking the wind out of him. He’s too startled to react, too startled, even, to be afraid. Outside of their training, Gladio has never laid a hand on him in anything but affection.  
  
“In the gym, yeah. But out there? That’s different.” Gladio’s grip tightens around his windpipe, constricting it just enough to make breathing difficult. Ignis wheezes when he tries to inhale. “I could kill you in a heartbeat, you know that?” he growls into Ignis’s ear. “And the daemons ain’t as nice as I am.”  
  
Ignis nods, and Gladio releases him, stepping away. He drags in a lungful of air, then another, pinpricks of pain needling his eyeballs. With the ringing in his ears, it takes him a moment to realize that Gladio has already gone inside, leaving him alone in the alleyway.

  
*

  
In the third year, he asks Iris to hunt with him. He brings it up one night after they’ve finished supper, while Gladio is away on a mission. He and Iris stand in the kitchen, clearing up after their meal, listening to the evening news on the radio.  
  
“I don’t know, Ignis…” she says. The clatter of dishes in the sink intensifies, as if she can mask her apprehension with cacophony. “Gladdy would kill me.”  
  
“We need not tell him.”  
  
“You think he won’t find out?”  
  
Ignis scrapes leftover potatoes into a container and holds out the dirty pan for her to take. “He’s always gone for days at a time. How would he find out?”  
  
“People talk. Someone might see you out there with us and make an innocent comment to him, and then boom, he’s pissed.”  
  
With a sigh of exasperation, Ignis snaps a plastic lid onto the container of rice. “And do you suppose it’s fair that Gladio dictates what I can and cannot do with my life?”  
  
“Ignis…” She puts a hand on his arm, soaking his sleeve with lukewarm dishwater. “He’s just worried about you. Losing Mom and Dad was really hard on him. He doesn’t want to lose you, too.”  
  
“Yet he takes you along on hunts with him.”  
  
“That’s different.”  
  
Ignis draws a steadying breath through his nose. It’s bad enough that Gladio treats him like a child, but coming from Iris, it’s more than he can stand. “With respect, Iris, I have been fighting daemons for many years more than you. I am confident I can handle myself.”  
  
She lets out a long sigh. “You’re not gonna take ‘no’ for an answer, are you?”  
  
“I’m afraid not.”  
  
She seems to hesitate for a moment. Ignis listens as she puts the last pan on the drying rack and pulls the stopper. The water sputters as it drains. “I can ask Dave tomorrow if there are any open contracts. Something local, that we can do in one night. Gladdy’s supposed to be back from Hammerhead on Friday.”  
  
Ignis nods, exhaling slowly. “Thank you, Iris.”  
  
“Well, don’t thank me yet. We may not be able to get a contract. And if Gladdy finds out…”  
  
“I’ll take full responsibility.”  
  
She gives him a light jab in the shoulder. “You’d better.”

  
*

  
It turns into a routine. They hunt together—he, Iris, and Dave—once every second week or so. It’s too dangerous to bring other hunters along with them; the more people who know he’s hunting, the greater the risk that it will get back to Gladio. They stay close to home, and they’re never gone for more than a night. They leave Talcott with Monica when they go. They trust her, at least, to keep their secret.  
  
Every daemon has a distinct scent. Ignis catalogues them all. Iron giants stink of burning phosphorus as they crawl from the earth. Flans, of ozone. Necromancers, of rot and freshly turned soil. He memorizes the sounds they make, too—the groan of rusted parts moving, a gelatinous wobble, a whisper like wind rustling through leaves. They aren’t intelligent creatures. They act on instinct. That, perhaps, is what makes them so dangerous. Still, by using his remaining senses, he learns how to predict their movements and patterns of attack.  
  
It helps to have Iris and Dave watching his back. Whenever his energy starts to flag, Iris is by his side, pushing an elixir into his hand. He’s lost count of how many times Dave has deflected a daemon’s claws when he was too preoccupied with another to notice it. They shout strategies to each other so Ignis knows exactly what they’re about to do—knows whether he should get out of the way or participate in the attack.  
  
Still, he’d rather have Gladio by his side.  
  
He’s missed the high of battle. It’s different from his sparring matches with Gladio—more thrilling, more perilous. It’s given him something lose. Something to fight for. It sets his blood on fire, knowing his life could be snuffed out in an instant. And the rush of it translates to the bedroom. Now, when Gladio comes home from his own hunts, it’s Ignis who pushes him down onto the mattress and takes him. If Gladio questions the change in his behaviour, he doesn’t say anything. He just lies back and enjoys it.  
  
This arrangement lasts for three months before his luck runs out.

  
*

  
It happens when they’re fighting a horde of hobgoblins just a twenty-minute drive east of Lestallum. They thought it would be an easy contract. In and out in thirty minutes, and home in time for supper.  
  
But Dave curses when they crawl up to the hill overlooking the nest. Ignis listens for a moment, trying to count their numbers. He can hear them snorting and grunting below, an unholy racket. Are there three? Four? He can’t pick out one goblin from the next, so he gives up after a minute, turning instead to Dave.  
  
“How many are there?” he asks.  
  
“About twelve of ‘em,” Dave says.  
  
Astrals. That’s four hobgoblins apiece. They’ve never taken on odds like that before.  
  
“Do you have any explosives?” Ignis asks.  
  
“Got one grenade.”  
  
“Are they clustered close enough that we can destroy them with it?”  
  
“Might take out a couple.”  
  
Ignis bites his lip. A couple isn’t good enough. Not when it’s just the three of them. But if he were to pair an elemental attack with Dave’s grenade, it might widen the blast radius and cut their numbers down to something more manageable.  
  
“Dave,” he says, “let’s use your grenade and my fire attack simultaneously. It should create a bigger explosion.”  
  
Dave grunts. “Yeah. And then what?”  
  
“The blast should concuss some of the others. We can rush in and send them on their way while they’re still disoriented.”  
  
“It’s not the worst plan I’ve ever heard,” Iris chimes in, close to his right.  
  
“Could work,” Dave admits, “but it’s a risk. The ones that aren’t concussed’ll know we’re here.”  
  
“Do you have any other suggestions?” Ignis asks.  
  
“Guess not.” Ignis hears a clank that must be Dave unhooking the grenade from his belt. “This is what we’ll do. Ignis, on the count of three, I’ll throw my grenade and you’ll use your magic. Aim for eleven o’clock. Then we’ll rush them.”  
  
Ignis nods, and beside him, Iris makes a small sound of assent. He holds his breath as he waits for Dave to give the signal, focusing as he gathers energy in the palm of his hand, his heart thundering in his chest. He dreads the chaos they’re about to unleash just as much as he craves it.  
  
“Three,” Dave whispers.  
  
Ignis flexes his fingers, feeling the flames seethe in his palm.  
  
“Two.”  
  
He lets out his breath, draws another.  
  
“One.”  
  
Next to him, there’s a clink as Dave pulls the pin. There’s no more time to waste. Ignis winds up and tosses his fireball, then throws himself down on his belly to shield himself as best he can from the blast. When it comes, it makes his ears ring. He can feel its heat on the side of his face. Below, the hobgoblins shriek, their flesh crackling in the blaze. The stink of it burns his nostrils.  
  
“Now!” Dave bellows.  
  
Gravel crunches as Iris and Dave scramble to their feet on either side of him. He follows them down the slope, summoning his daggers, spinning to throw one when he hears a hobgoblin howl behind him. The blade finds its mark with a wet sucking sound, and as the daemon falls, the life slipping from it, Ignis’s dagger returns to his hand.  
  
All around him, it’s pandemonium. Between Iris shouting and the daemons caterwauling, he can’t quite get his bearings. He pivots when he hears a shuffle behind him, raising his blades in defense, but nothing comes. He holds himself still and listens. Somewhere nearby, Dave curses. Something heavy strikes flesh. Then a secondary explosion goes off, momentarily deafening him,  and that’s when it happens.  
  
Pain flares bright and hot and sudden in his shoulder. He screams, staggering to his knees. It’s the most bitter agony he’s felt in a long while, perhaps since losing his eyes. Distantly, like he’s been shell-shocked, he hears Iris shouting his name. He puts a shaking hand to the wound and finds wetness against his palm. His shirt is torn, the flesh beneath it rent. The work of a goblin’s claws.  
  
He doesn’t remember much after that. There are vague snatches of Dave’s voice and a warm arm around him. The numbing coolness of a potion. The rumble of a truck’s engine.  
  
For a while, he drifts in and out of consciousness, hardly knowing or caring where he is. When he finally comes to, it’s slowly, his cheek pressed against cool vinyl. It takes him a moment to realize he’s in Dave’s truck, lying in the backseat.    
  
“Ignis?” Iris says in a hushed, worried voice.  
  
He groans and reaches out a hand to get his bearings. A cold pane of glass meets his bare fingertips. “What happened?”  
  
“A hobgoblin,” she says. She puts a hand on his shoulder—the good one—to help him sit up. “Got you with its claws. I was so worried, Ignis.”  
  
“He’s fine,” Dave says curtly from the front seat.  
  
“Dave stitched you up while you were still out of it,” Iris says.  
  
Tentatively, Ignis touches his wounded shoulder. Beneath the shredded fabric, he feels the raised threads of the suture and the slick, pulpy flesh where the hobgoblin tore him open. There’s no pain when he touches it. The potion must still be working its magic.  
  
“Quit putting your hands in it,” Iris chides. “You’re gonna make it worse.”  
  
“How bad is it?”  
  
“Pretty bad. It’s gonna scar. Gladdy’s gonna notice.”  
  
Gladio.  
  
Ignis has explained away minor cuts and bruises, but he doubts there’s a lie on Eos that will convince Gladio he hasn’t been hunting. And he can’t very well refuse to take his clothes off in front of him ever again. That would be absurd.  
  
“We’ll be arriving in Lestallum in five minutes,” Dave announces. “Better start thinking up your excuses.”  
  
“It’s gonna be okay,” Iris says, but she sounds like she’s trying to convince herself as much as him. “Gladdy’s supposed to be gone until Friday. That gives us three whole days. We’ll clean you up and tell him you were attacked by a stray cat.”  
  
Dave snorts. “Sure. A stray cat. He’s definitely gonna believe that.”

  
*

  
Dave parks in the lot down the street from their apartment, and once they pull Ignis out of the back seat, he and Iris each sling an arm around him to help him walk. He still feels weak, nauseous. The potion has begun to wear off, and his shoulder throbs with a warm, dull pain. He doesn’t trust himself to stand on his own feet yet.  
  
Getting up the narrow staircase behind the junk shop is a challenge, but they manage, Dave cursing and muttering all the way. At the top, they pause just long enough for Iris to dig the keys out of her pocket. There’s a jangle as she finds the right one and fits it into the lock. The door opens with a creak.  
  
And then Iris and Dave both go quiet, halting abruptly as soon as they cross the threshold. Iris’s arm tenses around Ignis’s waist, her hand curling in the fabric of his shirt. She presses in closer against his side.  
  
“Where the hell have you been?” Gladio’s voice, a low growl, comes from the living room.  
  
Ignis’s stomach drops into his feet. Gladio was supposed to be gone for the rest of the week, fending off daemons while Holly and her crew repaired the cell tower near Hammerhead. Why is he back so soon?  
  
“Will somebody answer me?” Gladio demands.  
  
“Gladdy—”  
  
“ _Fuck_. Is Ignis bleeding?” The springs in the couch creak. Swift, heavy footsteps cross the floor, and Gladio’s hand suddenly seizes his arm, squeezing it in an iron grasp. Ignis winces as it pulls at his stitches. “Were you hunting?”  
  
Iris tries placate him. “I’m sorry, Gladdy, we—”  
  
“I asked them to take me,” Ignis cuts in. His voice comes out weaker than he intended. But he’s so tired. Dizzy, even. He just wants to sit down. “Don’t blame them, Gladio. Iris tried to talk me out of it. It isn’t her fault.”  
  
The room goes so quiet that Ignis can hear his own blood dripping onto the floorboards. He wishes he could see Gladio’s face. At least then, he could try to decipher what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling, beneath the anger. But all he has to go on is Gladio’s hand gripping his arm, the agitated staccato of his breaths, the absolute silence of the others.  
  
“Iris, go to Monica’s,” Gladio says. His voice is too calm, too steady. Ignis has never heard him speak with such a cold fury before. “Stay there until I call you.”  
  
“But Gladdy—”  
  
“I said go,” Gladio snaps.  
  
“Gladio—”  
  
“Shut up, Dave. I don’t wanna hear shit from you right now. Get the hell out.”  
  
A sullen silence ensues, and then a shuffle of footsteps, followed by the finality of the apartment door closing. They’re alone. Ignis has always prided himself on his ability to navigate uncomfortable conversations, but now, all he wants to do is turn on his heel and run. They aren’t even touching, but Gladio’s hostility is as tangible as the smothering air of a humid summer day.  
  
Just as he’s about to open his mouth to speak again, Gladio jerks him into the kitchen and forces him to sit at the table there.    
  
“What the hell were you thinking?” A cupboard door creaks open—the one over the refrigerator, where they keep all their first aid supplies. Even the shuffle of boxes sounds furious as Gladio rummages through them. “You put my sister in danger.” The tap runs, and a moment later, the chair next to him scrapes across the linoleum, Gladio’s knee knocking against his as he sits. “You put _yourself_ in danger.”  
  
“Dave was with us—”  
  
Gladio tears his sleeve in half with his bare hands, parting the fabric to get to the wound. “I don’t give a shit about Dave. You had no right.”  
  
“To put myself in danger?”  
  
“To put Iris in that position,” Gladio snaps, dabbing at the wound with a wet cloth. Ignis bites his lip as the fabric chafes his raw flesh. “To sneak around behind my back and do what I asked you not to.”  
  
“Iris is a perfectly capable hunter—”  
  
“How the hell would you know? You can’t even see her.”  
  
Ignis’s blood goes cold, raising the hair on the back of his neck. His condition has often played a starring role in their countless arguments. It’s always been the reason he shouldn’t hunt, shouldn’t put his life on the line to help his fellow man. But Gladio has never thrown it in his face like that. He’s never been that cruel.  
  
“If anything’d happened to you, I don’t know if I—” Gladio breaks off, letting out a frustrated huff. Paper crinkles as he tears open a package of gauze. “Shiva’s tits. Three inches to the left, and you’d be dead.”  
  
“But I’m not.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter. You were just lucky. What the fuck happened?”  
  
Ignis sighs, leaning on the table with his free elbow. “We ambushed a nest of hobgoblins, but there were more of them than we expected.”  
  
“Of all the stupid—”  
  
“I fought daemons before I went blind, and you never objected,” Ignis interjects.  
  
Gladio applies the bandage to the edge of the wound, where the claws tore open the flesh over his collarbone, and smooths it down over his shoulder with gentle hands. “It’s not the same. There were a hell of a lot less of ‘em back then.”  
  
“But we hunted together as a team, and we prevailed. Why can’t we do the same now?”  
  
“Because I can’t protect you!” The table jolts as Gladio’s palm smacks against it. “I can’t watch your back and my own at the same time. Not anymore. Fuck, Ignis.” Gladio’s chair scrapes backward, and Ignis flinches at the hard edge of disgust in his voice. “Why can’t you just do what I ask for once?”  
  
Ignis turns his head, following the sound of Gladio’s footsteps as he begins to pace their kitchen. “I wasn’t aware I had to answer to you,” he says coolly.  
  
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”  
  
Ignis shakes his head. “That’s not your job, Gladio. I have to fight. For Noct.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I got news for you. He ain’t here,” Gladio snaps. “It’s just you and me.”  
  
“It won’t be that way forever. I have a duty, Gladio, a mission. I must fulfill it.”  
  
“Your life is more important to me than any of that,” Gladio says, taking Ignis’s hands in his own. The familiar heat of his skin is almost enough to make Ignis second guess his resolve. Almost. “Promise me you won’t go hunting again. I’ve seen more people die in the past three months than I have in the rest of my life combined. They weren’t pretty deaths, Iggy. I can’t let that happen to you.”  
  
“Please try to understand, Gladio. Before all this, I had a career. I had duties. I was needed.” The hands slip out of his grasp, and Gladio resumes his pacing. “Now I have nothing.”  
  
“Nothing? You have your life. You have me and Talcott and Iris. Prompto, too. You have a family. Isn’t that enough?”  
  
Ignis wishes he could live his life for Gladio alone. He wishes he could be content to read with him on the couch and fall asleep in his arms and wake him in the morning with a kiss. But his life belongs to Noct, and it will until his dying day. That’s how it’s been since he was a boy. That’s how it always shall be.  
  
“Are you, of all people, telling me to put my obligations to Noct aside?” he says.  
  
From somewhere near the sink, Gladio lets out a long sigh. “Don’t you dare lecture me about duty.”  
  
It isn’t his intention to lecture. More than any of them, Gladio has worn the shackles of duty without complaint. He’s never questioned his role as Noct’s Shield, never protested his own expendability.  
  
That’s why it seems so unfair that he can’t put himself in Ignis’s shoes.  
  
“I apologize for putting Iris in danger,” he says, fighting to keep his voice steady, “but I will not apologize for putting myself in danger. It’s my life, Gladio. You can’t tell me what I can and cannot do with it.”  
  
“Doesn’t mean I have to stand here and watch you throw it away.”  
  
“What are you saying?”  
  
There’s a beat of silence before Gladio speaks. “I’m asking you—I’m begging you—to stop hunting. I’m not gonna ask again.”  
  
Ignis wets his lips with his tongue. “I can’t, Gladio. Please understand—”  
  
“Then I can’t stay.”  
  
Everything happens so fast after that. He hears Gladio slam open the door of their shared bedroom, then the heavy zip of his duffel bag as he opens it. Hangers screech on the metal rod in their closet. Drawers slam. Clothes rustle as they’re shoved into the duffel bag. Gladio mutters under his breath, the words inaudible.  
  
He should say something. The trouble is, he’s not sure what. He can’t seem to get his mouth working; his brain is too busy tripping over itself in a panic, trying to figure out what exactly Gladio means when he says _I can’t stay_.  
  
Does he mean forever? Or just for the night?  
  
It takes maybe five minutes for Gladio to pack up his things and leave. Ignis hears him slipping his feet into his boots, then the door opening, but he can’t say a word to stop him. He opens his mouth, but all he can do is gasp in a breath like he can’t get enough air.  
  
Gladio doesn’t speak, either. The door just clicks shut behind him.  
  
Ignis doesn’t know how long he sits on the couch, deafened by the silence in the apartment, immobilized by the numbness of his limbs.  
  
Gladio is gone.  
  
He took his duffel bag and walked out.  
  
And now, Ignis is alone.  
  
He starts when the clock on the bookshelf announces that it’s eleven o’clock. Body leaden, he struggles to his feet and feels his way down the hall to their bedroom, where Gladio’s scent lingers. He drops onto the bed they shared and presses his face into the sheets, inhaling, smelling strawberry shampoo and warm leather.  
  
He needs to hear Gladio’s voice. He needs to make Gladio understand that his duty to Noct doesn’t change the fact that Ignis is in love with him.  
  
Laying back on the pillow, he pulls out his phone and issues a voice command. “Call Gladio.”  
  
It rings three and a half times before going to voicemail. Ignis doesn’t bother leaving a message. He disconnects the call and tries again, with the same result. Desperate tears stinging his eye, he presses his face into the pillow and breathes in, counts to three.  
  
His third attempt goes to voicemail, too.  
  
He drops the phone onto the bed and curls up, around the emptiness inside of him where Gladio had been.

  
*

  
Gladio’s at the bar, well into his third beer and feeling real fucking sorry for himself, when his phone starts to vibrate on the countertop. The display lights up with a picture of Ignis. Scowling, he swipes to reject the call and returns to his beer. His beer, which cost six hundred and twenty gods-damned gil. It’s worth it, though. He hasn’t had a drink in more than a year, and this is the kind of occasion that calls for a bender.  
  
The reasonable part of him—the part that knows they can talk this out—wants to pick up the phone. But the part of him that Ignis cut to the core is stronger. Six, it hurts. It hurts a fucking lot. He was so sure Ignis would stop him from walking out. He didn’t think Ignis would sit on his ass and say nothing, fucking _nothing_.  
  
Twice more Ignis tries to call. The fourth time it buzzes, he answers without bothering to check the call display. “What do you want?” he barks.  
  
“Gladdy?” It’s Iris.  
  
“Shit.” He runs a hand through his hair, blowing out his breath in a frustrated sigh. “Sorry. I forgot to call. You can go home now.”  
  
“What’s going on? Are you okay?”  
  
He swallows hard. He’s not okay. This is probably the least okay he’s ever been.  
  
“Are you at the apartment?” Iris presses.  
  
“No.”  
  
She’s silent for a handful of seconds. “Tell me what happened.”  
  
“Nothing to tell. I left.”  
  
“What do you mean, you left?”  
  
“I mean I left. I left him.” Saying it out loud makes it feel too real. He swallows again as his throat starts to close, blinking back tears. Fuck. He’s never cried over anyone before. He’s sure as hell not gonna start now. “I asked him for the last time not to hunt anymore, and he refused. So I packed my stuff and left.”  
  
“Gladdy…”  
  
“You gonna take his side?”  
  
“No.” She sighs, and he hears a rustling from her end of the connection. “At least not until you tell me everything. Where are you?”  
  
“Don’t really want company right now, Iris.”  
  
“Well, that’s too bad. I already have my boots on. Tell me.”  
  
“The Hobgoblin’s Lair. It’s on—”  
  
“That dive just off the market? I know where it is. Man, you’re scraping rock bottom.” He has to smile at that. She isn’t wrong. “I’ll be there in ten. Sit tight.”  
  
He’s nursing his fourth beer, his head throbbing from the shitty country rock tune blaring from the bar’s speakers, when she arrives. Her arms go around him, hugging him from behind. Then she slides onto the stool next to him, shrugging out of her leather jacket, and orders a gin and tonic from the bartender.  
  
He should be pissed at her, too, for taking Ignis out when she _knew_ Gladio didn’t want him hunting. But he’s worn out. What’s done is done. There’s no point in lecturing her now.  
  
“Start from the top,” she says.  
  
So he does. She already knows most of it—how he’s begged Ignis a hundred times not to go hunting, how he’s explained to Ignis that he doesn’t need to fight anymore. She already knows they’ve argued over this very gods-damned thing dozens of times. But she doesn’t know that Ignis refused to listen to reason tonight, clinging to his duty to Noct. As he talks, she listens intently, chewing on the black straw in her drink.  
  
“Don’t you think he kind of has a point?” she asks when he’s done. “He’s a grown man, Gladdy. You can’t control him.”  
  
“I’m not trying to control him. I’m trying to keep him alive.” He takes a long draught of his beer, all too aware of her disapproving gaze. “Look, you weren’t there when he went blind. He could barely function. I had to watch his back. I can’t keep living like that, Iris. I just can’t.”  
  
“Do you love him?” Iris asks.  
  
Gladio downs the rest of his beer in three gulps. How the hell is he supposed to answer that? Yeah, sure. He cares about Ignis a lot—but that doesn’t mean he’s in _love_ with the guy. Ignis is his friend. A friend he’s been living with, a friend he’s been fucking almost daily, a friend who’s been sleeping in his bed for two gods-damned years. But does Gladio want to share the rest of his life with him? Not necessarily. He’s supposed to find himself a woman, put a baby in her belly, and then raise that kid to be the next Shield of the King.  
  
It’s the Amicitia way.  
  
Still, the thought of Ignis sitting alone in their apartment, desperately trying to call him, makes him wanna puke.  
  
“Gladdy?” Iris prompts.  
  
“I don’t know.” He puts his head in his hands, rubbing the heels into his eyes. His skull aches like Titan’s been playing kickball with it. “I don’t fucking know. And I don’t wanna talk about it.”  
  
“I’m not letting you leave until we do.”  
  
Fucking Six. Why won’t she go away so he can drown himself in booze? “He’s never said he loves me. And I’ve never said I love him.”  
  
“Doesn’t mean you don’t feel it.”  
  
“I’m not enough to make him happy, Iris. All he thinks about is Noct. Noct this, Noct that. Shit.” He rolls a bottle cap between his fingers, his despondent gaze scanning the decanters of tequila and rye behind the bar. He’s already thinking about his next drink. “If he loved me, wouldn’t I be enough?”  
  
She frowns at him. “Do you want him to depend on you for everything?”  
  
“What? No!”  
  
“Look at it from his perspective.” She starts to count on her fingers. “You pay the rent. You pay the bills. You buy the groceries. You clean the apartment. You work. You hunt. You have a purpose.” She raises an eyebrow at him and takes a sip of her drink. “What’s his purpose?”  
  
“He cooks.” _And sucks my dick._ “He loves cooking.”  
  
Iris rolls her eyes. “Get real, Gladdy. He had a job before. An important one. More important than yours, anyway.” He opens his mouth to protest, but she cuts him off. “How could he be happy being your housewife? Would you be happy doing that?”  
  
She’s right. Of course she’s right. He’s known it all along, even if he couldn’t admit it.  
  
But it doesn’t change anything. Once, he tried to leave Ignis behind in Cartanica, not because he didn’t care, but because he cared too much. He’ll always choose to leave Ignis behind as long as it keeps him alive. Even if it makes him an asshole.  
  
Iris watches him in silence for a long time. When he doesn’t look up, she sighs and motions to the bartender. “That’s it. We’re breaking out the bourbon.”

  
*

  
Over the next two weeks, Ignis tries to call him every single day. He even leaves a voicemail, but Gladio deletes it without listening. If he listens, he’ll cave, and he can’t let himself do that.  
  
Because Ignis still goes out on hunts with Dave almost nightly.  
  
Iris is still living at the apartment with Talcott and Ignis, and she keeps him updated on the situation. She tells him that Ignis didn’t leave his room for two days after Gladio left. That sometimes, Ignis asks about him in a quiet, hopeful voice.  
  
Stupidly, Gladio clings to the hope that Ignis will come to his damn senses.  
  
But he never does.  
  
He stays at the Leville for almost a month, keeping an eye on the classifieds for a new place to live. When he finds one, it’s a bachelor pad that he shares with a guy named Ethan—another hunter, though they don’t run in the same circles. Gladio sleeps on the futon behind a curtain. Not that he needs the privacy. They maintain different schedules, so they only see each other in passing.  
  
It’s not bad. But it’s not great, either. It’s definitely not what he expected his life to be at twenty-seven.  
  
He throws himself into working and hunting. When he’s not doing that, he’s meeting Iris at the gym or sprawled on his futon reading a book. He fills his every waking hour with activity so he doesn’t have to think about Ignis.  
  
But the nights are hard. Restless, he lies in bed, staring at the shaft of street light on his ceiling, and remembers Ignis’s heat stretched out beside him. Sometimes, in the dreamy space between sleep and waking, he’ll forget himself and reach out for Ignis, only to find the sheets next to him empty. Gladio’s dying to kiss him, to slide a hand under his shirt and feel the reassuring beat of his heart.  
  
His life feels fucking desolate. Oh, he still has his duty, and Iris, and Prompto, on the rare occasions they hunt together. None of that has changed.  
  
But being with Ignis gave his life a different kind of meaning, one he didn’t understand until now. With Ignis, he had a home, and a shoulder to lean on, and sex fuelled by affection. They didn’t just fuck. Hell, no. That’s too crude a word for what they shared. Being inside Ignis was a goddamn spiritual experience, as far as he’s concerned. And he misses it, now that he’s jerking off into a sock on a shitty futon in an apartment he rents with a stranger.  
  
_Do you love him?_ Iris once asked him.  
  
He does. Astrals take him, he does.  
  
That’s why he can’t go home.

  
*

  
Time passes in a blur, like scenery on a highway. It’s six months now since he left Ignis. The phone calls have long since stopped, and the pain has faded. Ignis doesn’t take up so much space in his thoughts anymore, but he’ll sometimes catch himself wondering what he’s doing and whether he's okay. He’s too proud to ask Iris for news. But somehow, she knows. And she tells him Ignis is doing just fine without him.  
  
Life’s too busy to dwell on it. The daemons are multiplying. Resources are scarce. It’s every man for himself out there. Ordinary people are scared and looking to defend themselves, so he’s picked up more hours at the gym, teaching people the basics of self-preservation.  
  
And that’s how he meets her.  
  
Liv.  
  
She comes in with a black eye and a fat, bloody lip, her torn flannel shirt hanging half off her shoulder and a raggedy backpack clutched in one hand. Tangles of strawberry blonde hair cage her pale, freckled face. But there’s determination in her blue eyes. Resolve. Steel. She’s been through hell, but she’s done taking it lying down.  
  
He’s seen that look before, in Ignis and Prompto and Noct.  
  
“Help me,” she says, dropping the backpack at her feet.  
  
So he does. As he teaches her to block and guard, guiding her hand with his own when she doesn’t get the moves quite right, she tells him how she came to be in Lestallum. She moved here eight months ago with her boyfriend, she says, from a village in Leide, abandoning their antique shop for the safety of the lights and setting up shack with a family of six in an old warehouse near the power plant.  
  
The drinking started first. Then, the beatings. He wasn’t always abusive, she claims. It’s just that leaving behind everything they built together snapped something inside him.    
  
Gladio can buy that. The darkness tests them all, and some people fail.  
  
“He hit me in the face with a bottle last night,” she says, gesturing at her eye. “That was the last straw.”  
  
They train together every day. He doesn’t know if she goes back to her boyfriend when they’re done. He doesn’t ask. He wants to know, but shit, it ain’t his business, not when they’ve only been acquainted for a couple of weeks. One thing leads to another, though, and she pulls him into a kiss one night as he’s locking up the gym, standing on the tips of her toes, her small hand an insistent pressure on the back of his neck.  
  
He kisses her back. He doesn’t know if it’s because she tastes good or because he’s been burning with six months of pent-up sexual frustration.  
  
They go back to his apartment together. It’s quiet when they stumble through the door, locked at the lips. Ethan must be out. Good fucking thing, too, because Liv doesn’t even hesitate before she pushes him down on the futon, peels off her leggings, and sits in his lap, her cunt swallowing his cock with a smooth heat that leaves him breathless. She rides him hard, panting into his ear, and his orgasm takes him fast.  
  
It’s only when he comes down from it that he realizes they didn’t use a condom.

  
*

  
“I’m pregnant,” Liv tells him, before he’s even had a chance to invite her in. She stands in his doorway, her backpack slung over her shoulder, the defiance in her eyes tempered by fear and uncertainty. “Pretty sure you’re the father.”  
  
Gladio doesn’t say anything, not at first. Six, he has no idea what to say, what to _think_. His brain just shuts right down. He’s always wanted to be a dad. He just never thought it would happen like this, with a woman he hardly knows. Assuming it’s true. Assuming it isn’t her ex’s kid she’s carrying. The timing makes things a little murky.  
  
One thing’s for sure—he can’t leave her standing out in the hallway, staring at him with that hopeful look on her face. Numbly, he stands back, pulling the door all the way open to give her passage.  
  
She drops onto the futon, raking a hand through her wild mane of hair. “What are we going to do? I can’t have a kid. Not in this fucked-up world.”  
  
He shuts the door and turns slowly to face her. “You could get rid of it.”  
  
“Abort it, you mean?” She laughs a little at the suggestion. “With what? A coat hanger?”  
  
“Or a licensed professional.”  
  
“Astrals, Gladio, the doctors we have left are too busy saving lives to deal with this shit. They’d laugh me out of the clinic.”  
  
“Not if we gave them enough gil.”  
  
This time, her laughter comes out like a bark. “Now you think you can pay to make your problems go away?”  
  
Sighing, he puts up his hands in surrender, wishing he’d kept his damn mouth shut. What the hell does she want him to say, anyway? She’s dropped a bomb on him, but Gladio’s not a total asshole. He takes care of his business. He’ll provide for her and the kid.  
  
“Sorry,” she says. She leans back against the futon and laces her fingers over her belly, frowning down at it like it can give her the answers she’s looking for. “You didn’t deserve that. It’s hard not to be on the defensive after all the shit I’ve been through.”  
  
“We’ve all been through shit,” he says, finally sitting on the futon next to her. “I was just agreeing with you that it’s not a great idea to have a kid at a time like this. But I’ll support you, if you want to keep it.”  
  
Liv bites her lip, lifting her eyes to meet his. “I do want to keep it. Despite everything.”  
  
It isn’t what he wants. But he’s come to realize that, mostly, life isn’t about getting what you want. It’s about making the best of what you have. Right now, what he has is an attractive woman willing to share his bed, and the promise of a family. He could do worse. He’s not thrilled with the situation, but he’s not unhappy, either.  
  
Gladio puts his arm around her and rests his cheek against her head, breathing the sweet smell of her hair. “All right, then. Guess we’re having a baby.”

  
*

  
The phone rings when he’s digging in his duffel bag for the keys to the gym, which seem to have disappeared into another fucking dimension. Or maybe he left them on the kitchen counter. It’s hard to say. Two days ago, Ethan moved out and Liv moved in, and between work, hunts, and unpacking, he’s barely had time to sleep.  
  
It’s because he’s so tired that he picks up the phone without looking at the call display.  
  
“Yeah?” he grunts.  
  
“Gladio.” Fucking shit. It’s Ignis. The last person he wants to talk to, but also the person he wants to talk to the most. The sound of his voice floods him with a sudden warmth, like a shot of whiskey on a frigid day. “Please don’t hang up. This isn’t a personal call.”  
  
“Then what is it?” he demands, the keys completely forgotten.  
  
“There was a fire at one of the greenhouses near Old Lestallum,” Ignis says. “We need as many hunters as we can get to fend off the daemons while it’s being rebuilt. It would be a two-week trip. Iris and Dave are coming along as well. We thought…well, we could use your help.”  
  
“No.” The word slips out of him before he even thinks about it. “Sorry. I can’t.”  
  
Ignis sighs. “Gladio, please—”  
  
“You shouldn’t have called.”  
  
“Lives are at risk,” Ignis says, sounding like a disapproving teacher. Astrals. A lecture is the last thing he needs. Especially on this topic, after all the people he’s saved these past few years. “I don’t care what you think of me. But surely you care about doing your duty. This is an important job, Gladio.”  
  
“There are plenty of other hunters who’d be happy to help you out,” Gladio says.  
  
“Gladio, wait.”  
  
And dammit, he does. He can’t bring himself to hang up on Ignis, not when he’s pleading with him like this. “What?”  
  
“Will you ever come home?”  
  
Gladio grits his teeth. He wants to go home. He wants that more than anything. But— “When you quit hunting. That’s all I’m asking you to do, Iggy.”  
  
“You know I can’t,” Ignis says softly.  
  
“Then there’s nothing left to talk about.” Gladio squeezes his eyes shut and swallows hard, schooling his voice before he speaks again. “I gotta go. Don’t call me again, okay?”  
  
He hangs up before Ignis can say anything more, then rests his forehead against the cool brick of the gym’s wall, sucking in a shuddering breath as tears prick his eyes. Six, it hurts. Talking to Ignis has brought back all those memories of the night he left, and the long, empty days that followed. There’s a part of him that still wants Ignis, that still longs to kiss him, to fuck him. Being with Liv hasn’t suppressed that hunger.  
  
It hasn’t smothered his feelings for Ignis.

  
*

  
Liv is sixteen weeks into her pregnancy when her agonized sobbing brings Gladio to the bathroom door. He hovers outside for a minute, listening, concern gnawing at him, before he knocks politely. Inside, Liv sobs harder.  
  
“Everything okay in there?” he asks.  
  
She doesn’t answer. He tries the knob, finding it locked. That’s when he decides to kick in the door.  
  
She’s sitting on the toilet, her skirt hiked up and her underwear around her ankles. It takes him a minute to realize they’re soaked with blood. There are drops on the floor, too, and a bloody handprint on the counter.  
  
“Fucking Six, Liv!” He goes to his knees in front of her, grabs her by the arms, and searches her mascara-streaked face. He should take her to the clinic. There’s so much blood. “Are you okay?”  
  
Liv shakes her head and presses her face into his shoulder, her body racked with sobs. “I lost it.”  
  
All he can do is put an arm around her, feeling something like relief.  
  
And he hates himself for it.

  
*

  
Six years after the darkness began, Gladio almost runs into Ignis in an alleyway near the market.  
  
He backs up against the wall as Ignis approaches, hardly daring to breathe. The cane is nowhere to be found. Ignis walks like he’s regained his sight, like he’s memorized every last gods-damned cobblestone under his feet. Anyone who doesn’t know him might doubt he’s blind at all. But Gladio knows the signs—the way Ignis keeps his head tilted a little to the right, the way he doesn’t actually look at anything around him.  
  
He expects Ignis to walk on past.  
  
That would be too easy, though, because this is Ignis and he notices everything, even when he can’t see shit.  
  
He pauses when he reaches Gladio and turns his head just a fraction, as if he heard a sound and now waits for it to repeat itself. They’re standing so close that Gladio can see his nostrils flare. So close that Gladio could reach out and touch his cheek.  
  
But he can’t.  
  
It’s too late for that. His pride won’t let him.  
  
“Gladio?” Ignis murmurs.  
  
Gladio holds his breath, willing him to keep walking.  
  
But Ignis doesn’t. He turns to face Gladio, his scarred lips parting. “Are you there?”  
  
_Yes, I’m here_ , Gladio wants to say. _I’m here, Iggy_.  
  
He doesn’t, though. He just looks at Ignis’s face—at the pale scar tissue on his lip and eyebrow, at the twin freckles on his cheek—and wrestles with the longing to kiss him. If he said something now, Ignis would kiss him back. He’s sure of it. All he has to do is say something, and everything will be okay.  
  
He waits a little too long, though. Ignis turns away, bowing his head. “I see,” he says softly.  
  
And then he goes.

  
  
*

  
  
Ten years after the darkness began, Gladio receives a call from Prompto.  
  
“Hey, buddy,” he says when Gladio answers, “we could use your help out at the garage. Cindy’s got a flan situation on her hands. You in?”  
  
Gladio grunts. He glances at the kitchen, where Liv stands at the counter studying a cookbook, her arms crossed over her chest. It would be good to get away. It’s been a few weeks since a hunt took him from Lestallum overnight, and he and Liv have been fighting. “You workin’ alone?” he asks.  
  
“Nah. Got Ignis here too.”  
  
Ignis. It’s been three years since Gladio last saw him, in the alleyway next to the market. Part of him wants to turn Prompto down and avoid any awkward situations. Ignis knew he was there that day. Of that, he’s certain. He doesn’t want to explain why he didn’t say anything, because he doesn’t even think he could explain it to himself.  
  
The other part, though, wants to see him. He still remembers how Ignis felt in his arms, back when they were together and things were good. It’s something he’ll probably never forget. And even if he doesn’t get to hold him again, at least he’ll get to look at the face that won’t let his heart go.  
  
One last time.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, pushing himself up off the futon. “I’m in.”

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, I struggled mightily with this one. I've been working on it for two months. It was originally meant to be much shorter, but then I felt like I had to cover most of the World of Ruin. It was difficult to write primarily because I felt I had to follow canon—namely, that the boys rarely hunt together in the World of Ruin and that Gladio has a girlfriend. Moreover, I hated having to break up Ignis and Gladio. So I just powered through it, and I'm sorry if the writing quality suffered near the end. That said, I hope part three will rectify the situation... and more.
> 
> Unbeta'd and unedited. Apologies for grammatical, characterization, and pacing errors.
> 
> As usual, if you enjoyed this, please consider leaving kudos or dropping me a comment! I appreciate them more than you know. They keep me going. Thank you! :)


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